Making sense (and, sometimes, nonsense) out of Current News, Issues, Politics

Tuesday, February 9, 2016

Bernie Sanders' Dishonest "Medicare for All" Ploy

One of the most important big-ticket items on Bernie Sanders' socialist agenda is to ditch all other forms of health care insurance and put every American on Medicare. Even though this would represent a $2 Trillion increase for health care spending over the current $4 trillion in current federal spending, not to worry. The rich and Wall Street will pay for it. Probably tanking our economy and making us as screwed up as Greece; economically. But, let's put that aside.

A lot of people like Bernie's plan because most people think Medicare works; providing 55 million elder Americans with the kind of health care they need at the time the need it most.

However, for millions of Medicare beneficiaries, the system is broken. In a 2008 study by the Independent Payment Advisory Commission for Medicare that reports to Congress, 29% of Medicare enrollees were unable to find a primary care doctor that would accept the insurance because, simply, Medicare substantially underpays doctors and hospitals for their services. In fact, the American Hospital Association (AHA) found that, on average, hospitals received only 86 cents on the dollar for the care they provided in 2012; substantially less than those cities and states that have higher costs of living. The only reason that a doctor or hospital accepts Medicare patients is that they can offset that deficit by charging the privately insured at a high rate, and if unable to do so, they stop treating Medicare patients.

The reality is that if private insurance didn't exist, few if any doctors or hospitals would be able to survive on what Medicare pays. Our whole system of health care would collapse. That would be the legacy of Bernie's "Medicare for all" plan.

One last thing. When trying to justify his plan, Sanders continually repeats the lie, that as a country, we pay the most for our health care and get little in return. While it is true that we do pay more, we also have the highest disposable income of almost every other country. For example, the average American had an annual personal purchasing power of $54,582 in 2012. When comparing that to the United Kingdom, where they have universal free health care, the number is $30,064. So, it is only logical that our standard of living would result in higher health care costs. Also, the costs are lower in other countries because they cap damages for medical malpractice. Not so here, where malpractice litigation can result in payouts in the multi-millions, forcing doctors and hospitals to practice defensive medicine by increasing the number of referrals to expensive specialists and pushing them to order a greater number of tests to insure that he/she doesn't miss something.

More importantly, contrary to the Democrat's claim that we don't have the best healthcare system in the world, just look a this table from a Forbes article:

This is why so many people who have universal health care in their own countries, elect to fly here (if they can afford it) to get treated for serious diseases. Again, this shows Bernie's dishonesty by making it sound as if we don't have the best health system in the world. Enough already with the socialist crap!